“Tchaikovsky today, huh?”

“Violin Concerto, D-Major. One of your favourites.”

“You’re usually playing Bach.”

“I felt a change in pace wouldn’t disrupt the continuum.”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because you’re not playing at all.”

The song stops; the sociopath stills.

John blinks, and the ghost is gone without a trace; the song over without a flourish. Silence suddenly settles in the flat as though it had been waiting all along.  He feels inconsolably lost without the mirage and the specter’s song.

After all, a fake, he sadly supposes, is better than nothing at all.

but that’s no excuse for the state i’m in.

“to take another’s hand is to entwine your life with theirs; to promise that you need not face the world alone.”

… Formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

funny how a photograph can take you back in time
to places and embraces
that you thought you’d left behind

When you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield.

It’s always when the flat is at its quietest - when isn’t it, though? - that John thinks, for a fleeting second, that everything will be okay. It’s when he hears things that his hope is rekindled. The creaking of the fifth step up to 221B. Light, pacing feet too early in the morning. The violin that used to keep him up at night. Irritated muttering from the kitchen. Audible signs of boredom from the sitting room. A baritone voice calling his name.

He thinks it’s him - he thinks he’s come home. John thinks he’s no longer alone.

“… Sherlock?” he calls softly, as if even saying the name will break the illusion. He waits for a reply that never comes.

When he looks over his shoulder at the silent flat, Sherlock is never there.

thought of you and where you’d gone
and the world spins madly on.